Life in Damascus is a mix of boredom, noise and fury

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My relatives back home in Damascus have become blasé about the fighting. “Oh,
we’re used to it now. It’s just a distant thumping sound that gets louder or
more frequent sometimes,” they say stoically of the civil war in Syria that
rages in parts of the capital.

To my surprise, people still get up to go to work every morning, though they
first check on the state of the fighting in the same way Londoners check the
weather. What they complain about are the checkpoints. These are all over
the city but some are best avoided. Word spreads quickly about